[rhn-users] RedHat updates can be downloaded through a Windows Multilink connection?

[John Wirt]

I have been trying for months to update my installation of RedHat Enterprise WS version 3 Update 2 AMD64/Intel64 EM64T to the latest versions for all packages. The problem is that downloads of multimegabyte packages stall.

The difficulty is apparently has something to do with my network connection. 

My Linux machine (a Dell 670 Precision workstation with a Xeon processor) has access to the Internet through my LAN, which is a peer network (Microsoft Windows NETBEUI). The gateway to the Internet is thorough two Zoom modems, one v.92 and one v.90, that are multilined using Windows 2000 Dialup Networking.  The configuration of the network is that the machine with the dialup connection to the Internet, which has Windows 2000 SP4,  is connected to a 3Com Office Connect hub, which is connected to the Linux machine. Connection sharing from the LAN to the dialup connection is provided by NAT32, which as the name indicates is network address translation software (www.nat32.com). The resulting download capacity is about 100kb (2 56K connections).

The arrangement works fine from Windows. I also connect to the Internet from my laptop, which is also connected to the network. I can upload and download email, files, and web traffic from my laptop all day long with no problems.

The RedHat Up2Date program connects fine and I can select the packages to download but after about 10 minutes in downloading a multi-mebabyte file, the connection begins to stall and run very slowly until a point where it has almost stopped. The downloads stop completely if I attempt any Internet operation (download email, browse to a website) from the gateway machine or the laptop.

If I then shutdown the dialup connection and start over, I can reconnect to the RedHat Network and initiate package updating again. But I can only do about 5 packages at a time, not including any large packages (over 10 mb) without having the downloads stall.

So the problem appears to be the Multilinking. I notice that when I disconnect the multilinked dialup connection, one of the modem does not shut down normally. It takes awhile to close. This is why, I think the problem may have somethin to do with multilinking.

QUESTION: I there any reason to think that Linux has some problem connecting to the Internet though a multilinked connection under Windows 2000? Is there anything I can do in Linux to avoid the problem I have?

Note that my network configuration has nothing to do with establishing a multilinked connection using Linux. The multilinked connection is made by Windows 2000. Linux is simply networked to the Windows 2000 machine. 

OPTION: My best alternatives are to: 
  1) establish a WiFi connection to the Internet for my network, which I can ddo.
  2) get a broadband connection to the Internet (either DSL or cable), which I can also do but would rather not because I do not want to give my current ISP, who gives me mailing services that I doubt I can get from any broadband company.

For the time being, I perfer getting Linux to run in my current network configuration. In order to do this, I need to donwlaod and install about 360 packages! It has been slow going. It has taken me a long time to figure out what the problem appears to be.

THE BASIC PROBLEM? Reading some of the messages in this list, it appears that I may be "out of my element" in using a RedHat Enterprise version of Linux. It came on the machine I bought from Dell so I really had no choice.  After taking a year to basically get nowhere on updating the operating system on my computer, I will have to pay $175.00 for another year's subscription starting in October?

John Wirt